Precarity, instability, and widespread insecurity characterise employment under the University-as-business model. Comment Editor Safreen AC explores what it means to pursue an academic career under these conditions.
If you have a personal relationship of any kind with someone who works at a University, you’ve likely been disabused of romantic notions about academia. Funding issues, precarious working conditions, exploitative contracts, and limited career progression are widespread issues in third-level institutions across the world. While PhD researchers face different barriers depending on their location, the status of scholars in Ireland often falls short of their European counterparts.
The difficulties start from the application process. Being accepted into a programme is not a guarantee of funding, and most researchers access it through Research Ireland, the national research and innovation funding agency. The Postgraduate Scholarship Programme is extremely competitive, and recent changes to the eligibility criteria have only complicated it further for prospective applicants. As of this year, an academic supervisor can act as the primary supervisor only for one applicant to the programme. UCDSU Education Officer Matt Mion, who has been working alongside AMLÉ on this issue, highlighted that this effectively adds another layer of competition prior to the funding application itself, and potentially increases the impact of individual bias. While there are other funding options like grants and scholarships from universities, corporate research departments, private foundations, or international funding bodies, the issue of competition remains the same.
Receiving funding is not a guarantee of stability either. In Ireland, the maximum stipend a PhD researcher can receive is set at €25,000 per annum, well below the minimum wage. Most researchers take on grading, demonstrating or other paid work in order to make up that difference. If someone is unfunded, they can apply to their university for a scholarship or fee waiver to cover programme fees, but unless they have savings or someone to support them, they take extra hours teaching or grading, or juggle more work to cover expenses.
The work done by PhD researchers and other postgraduate workers is essential to the functioning of universities, but in Ireland they are classed as students and not workers. This also means that the vast majority of non-EU scholars are on student visas, subject to work restrictions that limit their ability to cover expenses without savings or loans. Jack McNicholl, a representative of UCD Postgraduate Workers Organisation (PWO) also drew attention to how researchers from outside Ireland are reliant on the university, their supervisor, or other staff to tell them what to expect in terms of the housing situation, IRP expenses, and cost-of-living in the country. As Mion puts it, “Getting into a PhD is hard; surviving one is harder.”
McNicholl also highlighted that many PhD scholars are in their late 20s or early 30s, and nowhere near the student life stage. Most are past the age where their parents are responsible for supporting them, and many have dependents to support themselves. For non-EU researchers, being on a student visa means that their partners will not be allowed to work if they join them in Ireland. They often have to deal with the choice of whether to live apart from their families or bring them along and attempt to support them. Even for those who start earlier, the student label on the qualification means that not all employers recognise a PhD as work experience, which places people at a disadvantage in relation to their peers who went into the workforce.
Pursuing a PhD is often justified in terms of future payoff: the possibility of receiving funding in the second year of a doctoral programme, the promise of higher pay post-graduation, or the chance to have an academic career. It does work out for some people, but in the context of a world where there is high competition for funding, a lack of work, and a shortage of academic jobs, there are many for whom these payoffs never come. In present conditions, doing a PhD often turns into a relationship that Lauren Berlant describes as cruel optimism, a condition of developing an attachment or desire that is located in compromised conditions of possibility, i.e., where the thing you are working towards cannot deliver on its positive assurances. In those situations, people often feel that they are personally responsible for what is actually a systemic and institutional issue.
Cruel optimism structures much of contemporary liberal-capitalist society, and PhDs are no exception. Naturally, the question that arises is, what comes next?
Fair wages, secure working conditions, and the recognition of PhD scholars’ labour are critical to making things better. As Mion often says, “In my ideal world, I don’t represent PhDs because they’re workers. (...) They deserve more than precarious gratitude; they deserve respect, rights, and stability.”
The PWO has been especially vocal in highlighting the problems with the current system, advocating for an employment model of PhD research. To quote McNicholl, “We’re looking to fix all of [this], to make people see that the problems we’re trying to fix are actually their problems too. (...) Ultimately what you need is PhDs coming together and using the fact that we are so important to the function of universities as leverage to make these things happen.”
A PhD, like anything else, comes with risks. In terms of whether someone should do a PhD in these conditions, there’s no clear cut answer. It depends on individual circumstances and the primary thing is to know what you’re actually getting into. Academia is not immune to institutionalised prejudice and there are major barriers to entry, but that should not mean that people stop pursuing research altogether.
The existing system in Ireland erects barriers that limit the diversity of voices in research in more ways than one, and that is a net negative for universities and society at large. The solution lies in working together to create new narratives to tell, new things to aspire towards, and conditions that don’t generate the same attachments of cruel optimism.
For those planning to do a PhD, Education Officer Matt Mion is working on a PhD Guidebook that should be available by next semester. For current postgraduate researchers at UCD, the PWO is working on bringing people together and can be found on Instagram or contacted via their email ucd@pwo.ie.